 Families of newborn infants and young children with developmental disabilities face a special challenge. How to overcome the initial fears and hurdles presented by a disability and bring new dreams into the family circle. Hi, I'm Sandy Smolley, Secretary of the State Health and Welfare Agency. Today we're going to view a program called Early Start, a new statewide early intervention program for infants and toddlers with disabilities or developmental delays. As a registered nurse for the past 30 years, I can assure you of the importance of providing services and supports during the first three years of life. The Early Start program focuses on the entire family and their unique needs and wishes. Services are available in every community throughout the state through regional centers and neighborhood schools. These agencies enter into partnerships with parents, supporting them in making choices that will help their youngsters grow and develop. Additional information and support is available through Parent Run Family Resource Centers. Again, let me emphasize that the first three years are the most important building blocks of children's futures. Intervention during this special window of opportunity will bring rich gains in future achievement and social development. Let's take a look at some of these Early Start programs. Thanks for watching. I'm very grateful that there are programs that help us. I don't know what we would have done without it. It makes you more aware of the services that are available to the children. We get home visits. It's real good. It makes you feel comfortable. It always helps us support. Early intervention services are really important. We work with the family on identifying what are the needs, special needs of the baby, what are the family's concerns and priorities, and some families have resources where they've already been referred to other programs and we build on that to come up with the best plan for the child. Other families just have not had an opportunity to work with other agencies and programs and we help refer families and build a program for them. The services can range from infant development programs to nutrition services, nursing services. There's a whole range of services that we can place. A home visit means basically that it's a visit to the child's home by a professional or another parent, but it can also include a visit to a childcare provider or a grandparents' house or a daycare center. It's really a visit to where that child spends his or her time. And it's important for several reasons. First of all, it's important because it's convenient for families who have little kids to have people come to them rather than have to be going out to various places. It's also important because the people who are working with the family and the child need to understand the natural environment in which that family and the baby live so that any suggestions or help that they might give would be within the context of that family and really would be helpful. It was difficult because we never had a down child before and we really didn't know what to do. When we got hooked up with the parent-infant program, I saw a lot of mothers. They sort of gave me the jump start telling me where they had been as far as what to do first and that was to get hooked up in a program and just remember that he's a child first and then raising like you would have raised a child who didn't have downs. We're really zeroing in on what he can do more than what he's limited by. I think for parents, one of the most important things is to be around other parents. To be with parents who have gone through the initial shock, the initial phases of getting used to the idea that their child has some kind of disability and hearing other parents talk about what it was like in the beginning because I think parents, some parents feel that the way they feel, no one else understands that they are alone and how they feel and that they're going to feel like this forever. In a matter of one phone call, we learned about Amy's diagnosis and our lives were changed forever and it's taken quite some time for us to realize the impact that it's had on our lives. We suddenly saw ourselves as being very much unlike all the other parents in our community. We experienced ourselves not in the mainstream but outside of that and it was a very alienating feeling which did bring us closer together as a family and eventually led us to other families who were experiencing the same kinds of feelings that we were and we then felt a part of a new community. I think earlier intervention is critical for families. I think that Amy would not be the child she is without it. And I think that we would have been very, very hard pressed to figure out what we're supposed to be doing with her without that support. I think when faced with the choices of what to do now or what to do next for new parents of an infant who has disabilities it's kind of a frightening prospect. Nobody really anticipates that their child is going to be born with problems and when confronted with that you need all the information that you can get to best help your child and sometimes people are overwhelmed with information. What they really need is help and support and direction toward the best way to intervene and to relate to and with their child what to expect from their child. I think it's important most of all for new families and their parents to know that they have a baby who like any other baby needs to be loved and nurtured and taken care of. I'll give this as I'll shake yours. Shake it, shake it, shake it, shake it, shake it say it. RECORDING RECORDS The most important thing is the transe in which the child is born to when you receive We have received support in the program. It is very important that children from very young age start participating, to see that they can do it. Give the child a chance to grow up well, to discover that within this group you can socialize, you can have that support that you need. Give the child a chance. A lot of people are not aware that we're here, that we provide services for parents. Give them support, not just support with finding services, but also support for the families, for the mothers, for the dads that are having a lot of problems accepting, they go through a lot of grieving in that first three years. What did I do wrong? How can I do it better? And we're kind of here to tell them, it's normal, you're going to feel that it's okay. It started off really rough because we didn't really know how we were going to handle the situation. And we looked to our parents to help a little bit and we did what we could. And it was just really hard. And so when we found out about the regional center it could offer us this respite care. It's kind of like, it's the God's end, it's what we really need to have. When you have a stressful situation like this, it's very hard in the family. And every once in a great while my husband and I will get to step out for a few minutes and have a little bit of time for ourselves. I see these parents who have children who have some very significant problems. And parents who are dealing with the kind of grief that sometimes feels insurmountable. And I see them loving being with their children and I see them helping each other and supporting each other. And I see kids do great things. As we come here each time, every week, I love it and I wouldn't miss it for the world and it's helped her out a great deal. It's been wonderful. They can play an extremely important role in the decisions that are being made about their child. The direction that the child's program will take will depend a lot on how they're feeling about just the services, the kinds of things that they need and they feel that their child needs. They're willing to help you listen to you and they're supportive and they give you a lot of moral support. And they make you feel like you're not the only one and then you don't feel sorry for yourself because at first you feel like you're just the only one in the entire world that has a problem. You really have to form a bond first and talk to the parents and see where they're at and they can decide if they want your services. We really think that this helps her a lot. Remember the first time we came here, she wasn't moving her legs at all. She was about one year old. And the very first time, the ladies here tied a ribbon and a bell on her feet and she went for it and then the first time she started moving her legs, before it never moved her legs. And I think that we're coming to the right place. I think that one of the important things about Early Start is that it can give parents the opportunity to get the information and really begin to make some decisions for what directions they want to take with their child from the start. When my son was little, we got home visits and center visits. What's nice about home visits, it's very convenient for the families. You don't have to take your child out. It's also a very one-on-one time and you can address what's important to you without having to bring it out in front of everybody that's there. It's just the teacher and whoever is in your home at the time. On the home visit, I basically am the link between the teacher and the mother or father or parents. I, you know, a Spanish translation. I feel great because as a Southeast Asian, I and everybody has a right to serve their own community and I feel great to work with the county here as partly as a liaison and as an interpreter. I come here, I feel, you know, you feel better, you know, you feel good like that because you still have to see how the kids not do what they've been doing and start doing, you know. Families and early, early intervention for little babies with special needs is very, very critical to their lifelong successes. When we work as a team, when we work collaboratively, we will all help have a more comprehensive picture of service to the family. We will do a better job in identifying needs of the children and try to then figure out the small steps to making a big difference in that child's life.